Mere moments of clarity are all I can promise…

The Things We Do For Love

As I navigated the aisles “The Things We Do For Love” played in my head; a screechy record I’d have given anything to snap in half.

You see I had an intense headache all day yesterday. Wait, that’s a lie. It wasn’t all day. It did presto into a massive migraine for several hours or so just to mix things up a little.

But, as us mum’s do, I trudged on, driving the boys to school, continuing the laundry I’d started the day before, cleaning one of the bathrooms that just couldn’t wait another second, sorting and tidying a pile of wayward clothes that were, admittedly, mostly mine, cleaning the fish-y bowl and running up and down the stairs five hundred times or so fetching this and that for my daughter who was, to top it all off, home sick with the flu.

So yes, I hopped around like a good little bunny mummy until it finally took me out. Around four o’clock I had no choice but to surrender.

With one last swoop of my sponge, the pain grabbed hold and dragged me to my room, roughly shoving me onto the bed. “Lie down,” it jeered. “And stay down, or you’ll be sorry.”

Its grip tightened.

It was showing me who was boss and I knew better than to cross it. It pressed with all its might. It squeezed until I thought my skull would open and seep onto the pillow. I lay in frozen fear with no intention of disobeying its very clear command.

That is, until I realized with horror, that I’d forgotten about dinner.

“Who’s going to make dinner?” My panicked whisper pierced through the delirium and my throbbing brain.

“Not you,” hissed the pain. “I told you you’re not going anywhere.”

There was a moment I’d felt defeated. A moment where I thought I had to listen. A moment when I believed I couldn’t win.

And then there was the moment where I (gingerly) sat up, (stiffly) stood up and (somewhat sheepishly) spoke up; “Screw you,” I exclaimed. “My family needs to eat!”

That folks, is how I found myself staggering through the Safeway aisles, and I can literally use the word painfully here, picking out the ingredients to create a robust Spaghetti.

I almost made it too.

Standing in line, waiting to pay, reality kicked in. Still in front of me, was getting this stuff home, organizing it, cooking it, serving it and cleaning it all up and I have to say, it all just seemed a tad undoable.

As I leaned on the cart and discreetly dialed the number to our favourite restaurant, the record played on, only a little louder and little less screechy and it made me realize that when you do things for love, you never lose.